Handyman witnesses a murder in Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills

In this crime novel, a wayward handyman grapples with the suspicious death of his employer, a fragile choreographer who secluded herself in the Litchfield Hills. As the fallout mounts, the reader is taken to various locales in and around Manhattan, an escapade in Miami Springs and back again to the hills of Connecticut until this twisty conundrum is finally laid to rest.

EXCERPT:
Jed turned around and headed back for the cellar. Banging into things, he brushed past the mess the guy had made, located the breaker panel, flipped the switches, and climbed the stairs as the lights came back on. He called her name as he passed the kitchen and cut around the dining room, but there was no answer.

He hurried up to the bedroom and stopped short. Though he’d never entered, never gone beyond the pull-down attic ladder, he could picture exactly what should have happened. She should’ve opened her window and cried out the second Jed pulled in. Or shouted the moment the guy split. Or certainly just now when Jed barged into the cellar, hit the breaker switches, and began calling for her.

Hesitating a few seconds more, he slipped through the open door and found the bedroom half in shadow. Lit only by the little Coleman lantern he’d given her in case the power went off, knowing how frightened she was of being alone in the dark.

And there, in the dimness, he saw her. On the canopy bed, wearing a ruffled nightgown, looking half her age like a sleeping princess. Only she was lying sideways, on a slant, her back to him, clutching her raincoat. And she didn’t appear to be breathing. Didn’t respond at all even as he stood over her.

In his panic, he thought of CPR . . . but didn’t know how to do it and was afraid to touch her . . . spotted the phone cradle but couldn’t dial 911 because the handset was missing.

He found the wall switch and the bathroom lights, scoured the medicine cabinet and the nightstand for prescription vials. But there were no pills anywhere, no beta blockers or whatever it was she said she was taking. He thought of opening her mouth, at least doing that, but stepped back and froze when the motion-detecting floods flashed onto the rutted drive below, merging with the sound of squealing brakes.

He didn’t have to wait to find out what was next. First the crackle of the police radio and, in practically no time, Road Trooper Charlie Tate was up the stairs and upon him.

Tate glanced at the lifeless form on the bed, glanced back, and uttered the inevitable words: